Category: Health Care

In Numbers

195.3 mt food assistance distributed in July 2022

US$ 30,653 cash-based transfers made in July 2022, for cash for work.

US$ 1 million six-month (August 2022 – January 2023) net funding requirements

83,470 people received food assistance in July 2022

Operational Updates

• WFP provides social safety nets for 59,000 orphans and vulnerable children under 5 years at the 1,700 Neighbourhood Care Points (NCPs) in Eswatini through access to food. NCP partners continued with monthly monitoring, captured distributors reports in COMET and shared their monthly narrative reports.

• Under NCP food production, the harvesting season continues. Some NCPs have also received fruit trees, vegetable seedlings and fertilizers. Smallholder farmers continue to receive trainings and practice of conservation agriculture (CA) concepts at NCPs and household level, to ensure the provision of diverse and nutritious meals to the children.

• WFP works with the Government, through the Ministry of Education and Training in implementing a sustainable, nutrition-sensitive, and national school feeding programme. The Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) project started in September 2019, targeting 50 schools and 24,392 students. WFP works with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to empower local smallholder farmers to provide schoolchildren with food that is safe, diverse, nutritious, and local. The basket now compromises rice, maize, beans, vegetables and eggs. WFP is currently undertaking an evaluation of the pilot

• Staff members, alongside cooperating partners conducted a field visit to beneficiaries of poultry and cash crop production livelihood project for People Living with HIV (PLHIV), Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) and Key Populations, supported by UNAIDS.

• WFP together with the Government under the Ministry of Agriculture is supporting a project titled “Eswatini Integrated Agricultural Information Management System” (IAMIS). The IAMIS is designed to improve the performance management information systems for monitoring, evaluation and performance of food systems and livelihood programmes, through the design and development of an integrated online (webenabled) system. The pilot support has been extended to December 2022.

• Staff and implementing partners were trained on mainstreaming gender across all their activities.
Implementing partners were also trained on the WFP gender policy, protection and accountability to affected populations, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, and monitoring approaches.

Source: World Food Programme

Kaduna, 19 August 2022 – When health workers took the Tuberculosis (TB) testing outreach to Rigasa community, Kaduna State, Rabi Umaru, a 37-year-old housewife, did not need much convincing to get tested.

She had been coughing for two weeks but had not visited any health facility because of lack of funds.

“I usually hear on the radio that if you cough for two weeks, you should go to the health facility to test for TB. I eventually tested for TB and COVID-19 during the community outreach, and after testing negative for COVID-19, I used the opportunity to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. Leaving here, I will lend my voice to mobilize other women in the neighbourhood to come out and benefit from the free TB and COVID-19 testing as well as receive their COVID-19 vaccine,” she said.

Tuberculosis and COVID-19 share similarities despite being caused by different biological agents. Worldwide, TB is one of the highest causes of death from a single infectious disease, and in the past two years, nearly all countries, including Nigeria, have felt the impact of COVID-19, resulting in a global health crisis with over 595 million people infected and above 6.45 million deaths as of 14 August, 2022.

High disease burden

For now, Nigeria has the highest burden of TB in Africa and ranked sixth globally. Worried about the low turnout of testing against the two deadly diseases, the Kaduna State Government collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners to initiate, plan and conduct a two weeks integrated mass TB and COVID-19 screening campaign across the 23 Local Government Areas in the state. The outreach was also leveraged to expand the COVID-19 vaccination coverage.

Two high-risk communities from each LGAs were selected based on reviews data on the burden of TB and COVID-19 infection, population density and the testing rates in the state.

Intervention

Emphasizing the importance of the campaign, the Kaduna State Commissioner of Health, Dr Amina Baloni, said the outreach is apt to tackle the rising cases of COVID-19 and TB and improve the low population coverage of COVID-19 vaccination in the state.

Dr Baloni emphasised that the integration of the tests was to leverage resources to shore up testing when we noticed people were no longer volunteering for testing.

“We are working towards the national COVID-19 vaccination target to ensure that the disease is no longer of public health concern by the end of this year and using the opportunity to improve the detection of missing/undiagnosed TB cases to about 85% by the end of the year, she said.

To achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, Nigeria planned to get 40% of its population vaccinated by the end of 2021 and 70% vaccinated as at the end of 2022.

However, with only about 27 million persons vaccinated due to the low COVID-19 vaccination performance coverage level in many states, Nigeria is far from meeting the set target.

Encouraging numbers

To mitigate this challenge, states have been adopting the integrated health service delivery to expand COVID-19 vaccination in the country.

For instance, during the campaign in Kaduna Sate, over 20,000 people were screened for TB and COVID-19. Of which 115 tested positive for TB while 161 tested positive for COVID-19

Also, over 2 million people received the COVID-19 vaccination, pushing the state to 55% coverage of its eligible population as August 11, 2022. Kaduna state had only 9% fully vaccinated at end March 2022.

Appreciating the WHO and other stakeholders for bringing the health services to their doorstep, a community leader and ward head of Warri Street, Kaduna North LGA, Mallam Isa Nuhu, said the visit would shore up testing for TB and COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination in his community.

“My people were initially afraid of these two diseases. Bringing sensitization and testing to our doorstep has encouraged many residents to avail themselves of the services. It also fostered vaccination uptake in the community because some people resisted taking the vaccine during the initial vaccination drive in February due to rumours about its safety. However, the perception has changed after seeing those who have received the vaccines are still healthy,” he said.

Also, the ward head of Makera, Rigasa in Igabi LGA, Mallam Isiyaku Abdulwahab, applauded the initiative saying it gave members of his community the opportunity to access health care services.

Mallam Abdulwahab said “we know COVID-19 and TB are two deadly diseases, and we are grateful they chose to bring the outreach to our community. Bringing the TB, COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination to our doorstep is a sign that the government is committed to stopping the transmission of these deadly diseases”.

He urges the government to continue such interventions in other communities around the state.

Effective Harmonization

Buttressing the significance and success of the campaign, the WHO Kaduna State Coordinator, Dr Audu Sunday, said WHO supported the intervention with funding through USAID and GAVI.

He said although WHO’s role is to provide technical support, it has also provided catalytic funding to close up identified gaps and expand coverage of testing’s and COVID-19 vaccination.

“To ensure COVID-19 data quality assurance, the WHO also provides supportive supervision in the field and ensures all persons vaccinated are uploaded to the Electronic Management of Immunization Data (EMID) platform and the data validated.

For TB, we harmonize and triangulate data reported from the facility registers (presumptive TB and treatment registers) with laboratory register records and the drug inventory records used to crosscheck data quality’” he said.

Technical Contacts: Dr Fadare Omoniyi Amos; Email: omoniyia@who.int Dr Audu Sunday; Email: audusu@who.int

Source: World Health Organization

Tripoli – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Libya has welcomed a contribution of JPY 200 million (approx.US$1.53 million) from Japan to implement its food distribution in the West and the East of the country. This project aims to provide food assistance to more than 10,000 beneficiaries, including vulnerable and food-insecure people, as well as schoolchildren.

Furthermore, the Government of Japan has recently confirmed a new contribution of US$ 0.5 million to provide general food assistance to some 8,500 vulnerable IDPs, host communities and returnees in the South of the country who are suffering from high food prices caused by the war in Ukraine. “WFP is extremely grateful to the Government of Japan for these generous contributions coming at a crucial time in a world struggling with the impact of COVID-19 and the conflict in Ukraine,” said Maysaa AlGhribawy, WFP’s Representative and Country Director in Libya.

Both Japanese contributions will allow WFP Libya to support thousands of people in need who are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and rising food prices, with monthly in-kind nutritious and unconditional food assistance in the targeted districts across the country, where the market functionality has been greatly affected by global supply chain disruptions.

“Food security is one of the key sectors that Japan is tackling, in line with the ‘Food Security in Africa’ initiative,” launched at the sixth round of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development held in Nairobi in 2016 said Mr. Masaki Amadera, Chargé d’Affaires of Japan to Libya/Special Coordinator for Libya.

“Japanese contributions will not only support general food assistance to vulnerable communities but also the School Feeding Programme which will contribute to achieving three other goals; supporting the education of school children, stimulating local markets and agriculture, as well as creating job opportunities for the local communities, which we believe would contribute to the stability of the country,” Amadera added.

The Japanese support will also enable WFP Libya to lay the foundation for a more targeted social safety net system in the country. WFP plans to use part of the funds received from the Government of Japan towards the continuation of the central kitchen school feeding programme, targeting schoolchildren aged between 6 to 14 years in Benghazi city, in the eastern part of the country. WFP will provide these children with ready-to-eat meals such as canned tuna fish donated by Japan.

Source: World Food Programme

As of 31 July 2022, a total of 216 million people in the African Region had completed the primary COVID-19 vaccination series (fully vaccinated), representing 18.5% of the Region’s population. Three countries in the African Region have surpassed the target of 70% of their population fully vaccinated: Mauritius (75.3%), Seychelles (77.5%) and Rwanda (76.1%). Six countries have recorded between 40% and 70% of their population completing the primary series:
Mozambique (40.0%), Sao Tome and Principe (45.1%), Comoros (46.5%), Liberia (44.8%), Cabo Verde (52.4%), and Botswana (58.4%). Eight countries are yet to surpass 10% of their population completing the primary vaccination series: Burundi (0.1%), Democratic Republic of the Congo (2.6%), Cameroon (4.5%), Madagascar (4.5%), Senegal (6.3%), Mali (6.6%) and Malawi (7.6%).

Booster doses are being administered to fully vaccinated people (those who have completed the primary series) in 36 out of 46 countries in the African Region (78%). In these 36 countries, 11% of fully vaccinated people have received booster doses.

Data from 26 countries show that 50.4% of health-care workers have completed the primary series.

A total of 696 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been delivered in the African Region, including 66% from the COVAX Facility. This represents 60 doses per 100 population. Of the doses received, 59% has been administered. Nineteen out of 46 countries (41%) have administered fewer than 50% of doses received.
The number of doses administered increased by 9% in July

Source: World Health Organization

Global COVID-19 (total) cases, deaths and vaccinations to date

• Globally, the number of new weekly cases and deaths have continued to decline since a peak in January 2022.
• Numbers of new cases increased in past week.
• At the regional level, the number of new weekly cases increased in most of the WHO regions except Western Pacific and Africa regions.

Source: World Health Organization

30 new cases of Covid-19 were recorded from June 4 to 5, 2022 according to the report from the Ministry of Public Health and the Fight against AIDS and its partners.

Until June 5, 123 positive cases have been reported. In 49 health districts across the country. The district of Vumbi, in the province of Kirundo, in the north of the country, has been the most affected since April 18 with 733 positive cases listed from May 8 to June 4, 2022.

At Melchior Ndadaye airport and on land borders, 85 confirmed cases and 108 positive cases among outgoing travelers at the National Institute of Public Health.

A total of 1,112 people have tested positive for covid-19 in the past 4 weeks, according to the coronavirus pandemic response situation report.

More than 14,000 people are already vaccinated and this until June 5 and more than 13,000 have received all their doses, including 738 health workers.

This report speaks of a relaxation of respect for barrier measures within the population and the decline in voluntary screening as major challenges.

Source: IWACU Burundi